White House Must Respond to Petition to Remove U.S. Attorney in Aaron Swartz Case

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, right, watches as the new U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz is sworn in during her installation ceremony at the federal courthouse in Boston Monday, Jan. 11, 2010.

AP Photo/Elise Amendola

Share

White House Must Respond to Petition to Remove U.S. Attorney in Aaron Swartz Case

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, right, watches as the new U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz is sworn in during her installation ceremony at the federal courthouse in Boston Monday, Jan. 11, 2010.

AP Photo/Elise Amendola

A whitehouse.gov petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration remove Massachusetts' top federal prosecutor in the aftermath of the Aaron Swartz suicide has surpassed 25,000 signatures – meaning the administration is obliged to enter the debate over whether authorities went too far in prosecuting the 26-year-old internet sensation.

Aaron Swartz.

Photo: Creative Commons

Swartz, the executive director of Demand Progress, who had written about his own depression, was found dead at his Brooklyn apartment Friday. He was under indictment for more than a dozen counts of computer hacking and wire fraud over the downloading of millions of academic articles from a subscription database.

The petition to the White House asserts that U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz of Massachusetts went too far in prosecuting the young activist, who allegedly intended to upload the articles to file-sharing sites to free them for the masses.

Prosecutors reportedly offered Swartz – who helped develop the RSS standard and was part of a small team that sold Reddit to Wired parent company Condé Nast – a six-month deal if he pleaded guilty to the charges and avoided an April trial.

The proposed deal, offered in the weeks before Swartz hanged himself, was unacceptable to Swartz, his legal counsel, family and now the internet.

"A prosecutor who does not understand proportionality and who regularly uses the threat of unjust and overreaching charges to extort plea bargains from defendants regardless of their guilt is a danger to the life and liberty of anyone who might cross her path," said the petition.

President Obama appointed Ortiz in 2009 to be Massachusetts' top federal prosecutor. Before that, the 57-year-old handled economic crimes in the office and was the grand jury supervisor.

Ortiz spokeswoman Christina Dilorio-Sterling did not immediately respond for comment.

As of 3:00 p.m. EST, the petition had more than 30,000 signatures. The administration publicly responds to petitions surpassing 25,000 signatures.

Ortiz was not the line prosecutor in the Swartz matter. It was being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann, who previously won a record 20-year prison term for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez.